Scary Kids
by Kansas Kusuri
Summary: halloween '07 fic. Roxas and Axel find a loophole, but Riku doesn't, sad dead thing.


_**Scary Kids\Sexless Demons &**_  
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts  
Characters: Roxas & Axel; Ansem & Riku  
Wordcount: 2400? or so  
AU. 1, and Roxas tells Axel how not to grow up. 2, and Riku finds something that he can believe in.

Happy Halloween, ladies

When Axel turned seven, there was _such_ a big and lovely party thrown for him, that he barely noticed. But Mother did. Mother saw that her baby boy was growing up, _so_ fast, and she told Father, in an undertone, that since the boy could walk and talk and almost take care of himself, now, well, _maybe_ it was time he started taking care of himself (take him out of the nursery, you see), and wearing grown-up clothes. If you think so, of course, darling.

Father quite agreed. _He_ had grown up at _five_, after all. He'd get the real clothes and he'd open the big room, immediately.

--

When the faceless, meaningless guests had left, and the maids were left to deal with the mess of popped balloons and ripped-apart wrapping paper, Mother and Father drew their firstborn aside, and started to dress him up right.

The corset hurt. It was tight and his ribs were crunching together and _not_ breaking, just hurting. Then the petticoats and lace layers. Then a slip and another and there was an _ugly_ dress, plum-purple, crushed velvet, _hideous_ and heavy.

He could barely breathe in it all. He liked his short pants and smocks and daydresses much more. "Can't I wear those?" he asked (ribs crushed, hurt to breathe) "Can't I, please?"

"No." Mother said. "This is growing up."

"And you can't have these toys." Father said sternly, indicating his lovely new birthday dolls and trains and blocks. "We'll get you some books. Get you to school. _Proper_ things for a _proper_ child."

He hated them. He told them.

They smiled and laughed and said, "Aren't you darling." And then he was choking and he couldn't draw breathe, and distracted Mother had to run and get a knife and cut him loose from all the clasps that held him into all the clothes she secretly hated wearing.

"Perhaps he _shouldn't_ grow up yet..." she whispered. But Father shook his head and said that no, children mustn't delay ending their childhood. It was the worst, most violent, most stupid time of life, and the faster they got out of it, the sooner they could grow up into proper, upright, men and ladies.

--

So Axel was sent back to his nursery, to clean it up and say goodbye.

He went. And his pretty precocious brother was _waiting._ Axel supposed he should have known he would be.

Roxas reached his short arms up, waving for his brother to pull him out of his crib. "I don't want you to go. You don't have to." He said, in his high clear, early articulate, baby voice. And then he added, almost as an afterthought, "You can stay here forever."

"Can't either, stupid." Axel said. He put his tongue out at his brother, then went back to clearing up blocks. "I _already_ have a big room. And they'll lock me in it, if they want."

"Not if you never go in it." Axel didn't understand. "Looook." He reached under his pillows, casting about for something sharp in the mess of fat stuffed bears and blank-eyed, scowling, velveteen rabbits. They were alive, mostly, and Axel knew they hated him. "Mother came here to put me down. She forgot she still had this. And then she forgot to take it out."

He drew the knife from where he'd hid it, stabbed through Bethy Rabbit's spine. "It's alright, I don't _like_ her. She bites when I pet her." he said, slightly surprised at the look on his big brother's face. "Something wrong?" He pitched the knife through the high steel bars; it fell silent on the red-plush rug.

"No..." Axel picked the thing up, examining the ornate, carved bone handle, and the silver bright blade below it, almost as if he'd never seen a knife before. But, then. He'd never _seen_ it. Not in this way. He turned his eyes up to his baby brother, and his usually bright green eyes were dull in the reddish candlelight. "Nothing's wrong. No. It's a _good_ idea." He balanced the knife, delicately, on top of the toy-box..it didn't shine, either. Then he stood on tip toe, to reach up, over the bars. He took hold of Roxas, and tugged him out, clumsily. "I won't have to grow up. And I don't _like_ them anyway...Come on, then."

His brother's eyes were messing things up. They were shining, solemn, almost aglow in the dark light. For a while, he said nothing. Just looked around the messy nursery and thought about secret quiet things. Axel didn't try to guess at his brother's thoughts, he was preoccupied -- "You'll need to open the door." Roxas said, finally.

--

It was only ten minutes later, _only_ ten minutes, and then Axel didn't have to grow up, after all.

They went back up to nursery in silence. The candle was all burned out, now, but he knew what drawers to pull out. He put a thick, garish red sweater on over his blood-stained nightdress ("It matches.." Roxas murmured, giggling a little, before going back to his dead quiet.) and then bundled his brother up, stockings, Sunday Shoes, blue sweater and long scarf. "You're all tied up now." he informed his brother, smirking. "So you can't get rid of me when you get bored."

Roxas blinked over the top of the scarf, seeming to say, _yes, I_ can.

Axel ignored that.

He let down the crib's side instead, dropping the iron gate so that the bunnies and bears could get out, so that they wouldn't be locked up and forced to kill each other for food. Then, they left the house.

"Now what?" Roxas asked, his eyes shining, excitedly. Axel knew, and maybe he'd always known, but he wouldn't have remembered it, unless it was his seventh birthday, or unless he'd decided to stop growing up.

"Well, now..." he raised his hand, pointing out the second star to the right. "Now we fly."

---- et deux ----

"Riku..." The boy didn't look up. His mother scowled, and tried again, hissing, just a bit louder, _"Riku!_"

He looked up from the pretty fire-breathing unicorn he was drawing in the blank back pages of his bible. "What?" he asked, too loudly. "Lemme alone." People _looked_ up at him, and they frowned.

She reached out for him; he squirmed away. "Riku. _Darling._" She whispered, in an angry-concerned voice. "Are you listening to Pastor Brown's service? You bad, bad boy. You're big enough to _listen._"

He shrugged one shoulder, then went back to his Unicorn. He gave her fangs. "Pastor Brown's with the Black Man." he said, indifferently. "Doesn't that make him bad?"

His mother hit his mouth and the people smiled approvingly. "You're bad. Saying that! The Pastor.." she looked up at Brown. A poor sad man who always seemed nervous and never looked you right in the eye. "With the Devil! Riku, child, if I didn't know better...oh..." the people's eyes might have been glinting. She drew her baby close. "I'd say the Black Man's near to _you._ You can't--"

He pushed her away and stuck his tongue out at the watchers. "Momma, be quiet. I just said that to see what you'd do."

"It wasn't _funny._"

"Shouldn't you listen, Momma?" She started, realized she'd forgotten just what the Pastor's point was. He'd sidetracked her...

"You sit and, oh, you at least _pretend_ you're listening." She said, almost desperately. "You do care, don't you?"

"Yes. Momma."

He was lying. Riku at nine knew everything. He didn't believe in any Black man and he didn't believe in any Jesus. It was silly, magic and miracles. It was for _kids_ like Sora...he twisted his head around, over the high wooden pew -- yes, there was Sora, looking as if he wanted nothing more then to sit in a stuffy, hot building all day, listening to the Pastor droning on and on and on. And the other way..there was Kairi, sitting with her parents. She didn't see him but her father did. He _scowled._ Riku waved, cheerfully, and delighted at the annoyance that came across the man's face. Looking grim all day, walking around in heavy black clothes and muttering, "Sister..brother.." when meanwhile, people were dying and going to Hell. "How _boring_," Riku whispered to himself, "No such things."

He grinned at his mother, and at the watchers, before pushing himself into the corner of the bench, and defiantly, falling asleep before their eyes.

--

"You're _bad_." His mother said after the final prayer, dragging him off the bench. His head hit against the pew and he woke up fast, barely managing to stay upright as she walked fast through the Congregation. "Falling asleep! I don't know, I don't _know_..."

"_Mother_." He tried to explain in a rational tone of voice. "Mother, don't you see? It's all a lot of nonsense. There's no Jesus and there's no Devil!"

"He'll come for you." the woman hissed, skittering down the high narrow stone steps. "The Devil, he knows you. He'll come and _get_ you if you talk like that."

She gave a cry as her son wrenched his hand free. "Riku?!"

"I'll find _him_." he said, defiantly, pulling just out of her reach. "I'll find your demons and they won't be anything but shadows at night. They won't be anything! I'll show you."

She couldn't catch him back; already he'd made up his mind and lost himself in the crowd.

He passed Sora, grabbed his hand and pulled him away from his parents. "Riku! What are you--"

"Come on." he said, "I'm gonna show you, there's nothing to this at all. No magic, no lies -- Kairi, you _too_ --" she wriggled away from the thinning crowed, and followed, bemused -- "There's _nothing._"

They were out, now, and behind the cathedral was the forest. "This is _stupid._" Sora said, bluntly, and maybe _just_ a little nervously. "It's not safe in there."

"Why?" Riku grinned at the boy. "There won't be any Devil there, or demons either. You aren't _afraid._"

"No.." Sora muttered, "But.."

"Hm?"

Kairi answered this time. "What about Axel? And little Roxas? Something _got_ them. They didn't run away." She looked scared, but Riku could see she was excited, morbidly curious, too.

"Don't you want to know for sure?" he asked, lowering his voice to a dramatic whisper. "Maybe we'll see what took them." That was _nonsense_, of course. Those two, Riku had _always_ known they weren't right. They killed their parents and ran off, he was more sure of that then God. But if it encouraged her...

"Yeah." Kairi said, smiling small. They hadn't stopped walking and now the woods were looming high before them. "Come on, Sora. Don't you want to know?"

"Well." He looked uncomfortable but Riku knew, _knew_, Sora wouldn't be the only one left out. "Fine. If he's anywhere, he's in there, isn't he."

They stuck together, Riku led, Sora and Kairi followed. It was dark, there. Gloomy and oppressive and for a moment, Riku wasn't sure. But before he was quite sure of what to say, he was calling, calling for the Black Man and his demons and his witches. "Come out, come _out_," he yelled. "You, or God, I don't _care_ which!"

There was silence. _Dead_ silence, and if Riku had been a little older, he might have known that that wasn't _natural._

He turned around, laughing triumphantly. "See?" he asked, "See? Nothing's here! You two and me and--"

There was a loud _crack_ from behind him; a bough had fallen from it's tree. Riku spun around, his heart beating just a _little_ faster -- but no, it was just an old, decayed tree. "Only natural it fell. Still..." he grinned, and decided to tease...well...he couldn't _help_ it. So easy. "Still..maybe it was a _demon._ We should go see."

He walked up to the tree. They followed, not nervously -- _cautiously._ So that way, when they saw the cloaked figure, black against the dark green backdrop, they were ready to _go._ "Riku, come on--" Either he didn't hear or he didn't care; either way, Sora knew quite well that Kairi came first. He grabbed the girl's hand, and together they ran back, out of the forest, to the church and to the village.

Riku _had_ heard. Oh yes. But he couldn't have left. The man was _looking_ at him, and the strange bright eyes were drawing him closer. "You're a demon?" he asked, his voice just a whisper. "Or...the Black Man." He felt dreadfully uneasy, and a fear that had nothing to do with logic was building up in his stomach.

The man had long silver-bright hair. Dark skin, like an Indian, maybe, and his eyes were _orange_. Was that..right?

The man's voice was low, sinister, and not-quite human. "I'm Ansem."

"What about the tree?"

"I believe..I killed it." The demon seemed amused by that. "Should I kill _you?_"

But it didn't have any feet, Riku saw. The cloak trailed off into the darkness. So maybe he was a ghost. Maybe just a shadow...but that was alright. "Shadows can't kill me." Still, Riku took a step back, as a gloved hand extended towards him, a hand not looking to grab him but to --

touch him. Just on the forehead. Just for a second. Just long enough to _see._

Ansem smiled. His teeth were sharp and his tongue was black. He smelled like mummy powder and rot. "I could. But I don't think I _want_ to."

And then

_then_--

Riku fell to the forest floor, screaming, choking, _trying_ to get the monster out from where it had disappeared to, somewhere inside his heart, his self.

It was trying to move him. Control him! _Like the pigs.._ Riku thought, wildly, irrelevantly. _The demon went into them and ran them_ dead.

"And you're just like them." His voice said. Riku brought his hands went to his throat, and he tried to speak. No, nothing -- his mouth wasn't _his_ anymore. Oh, but. But. He knew what to do. He was terrified and maybe dying (_no, no!_) but he was still smart enough to know..._the church._ Even if it wasn't real, there was no where else.

He forced himself up, even though his body seemed to want to defy him, didn't _want_ to listen to him. Up, then, he _thought_ he could see the edge of the forest. He didn't have time to doubt -- he just ran, somehow, managing to keep his own self in control all the way up to the church's wide stone stairs.

But as he ran up the stairs, his foot tangled, caught on the stair, and he _swore_ it had moved on it's own accord. _Good.._ Riku thought, grimly. _He doesn't want me here!_

Someone had left the heavy stone door oh-so-slightly open. It was atypical, bur Riku didn't question it; he wriggled through and, stumbling every few feet now, went to the alter -- to the heavy gilded cross that hung over it.

He reached for it -- touched it, hoped it was _enough._ _I'm sorry,_ he thought, hoping that God or _Something_ believed him, that It could still think to get Ansem out of Riku's heart. _Just-- I didn't mean--_

But then, there suddenly wasn't any reason to worry. Something was pulled out of him, and he'd been right -- he was smiling, now, laughing, and the voice was purely _his._

He stepped back from the cross, the alter, all of it. It had been close, stupid even, but he was _himself_, pure and whole and believing, now.

--

His mother was quite pleased. Come next Sabbath, her baby was sitting quietly, respectfully, even, looking as if he and the Pastor shared some great, supernatural understanding. Maybe, she hoped, it was that mysticism they called faith...

But Sora scowled when Riku twisted his head around to see him. He could see the glint of orange, even this far away, reflected bright in his friend's dead-blue eyes.

And Ansem watched the boy glaring at him and saw the woman fawning on him. He thought to wonder, who was wandering the forest, and how, exactly, _were_ these monsters born, and he thought to laugh and laugh and laugh.


End file.
